


Better By Talking

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Angst, Comfort, F/F, F/M, Identity Issues, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Multi, OT4, PTSD, Polyamory, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Therapy, talk of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s not in a game, not saving the world, not a god; he’s just delusional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better By Talking

**Author's Note:**

> From a fic giveaway on tumlr. Pesterlog portions quoted directly from MSPA.

.         

.

 

_EB: i’m not sure what came over me there, i was acting really crazy for some reason._ _  
EB: but my head feels like it’s clearing up, i think i’m alright now._

And he is.

He is totally and completely alright, except for the delusional state he’s slipped into.

That’s what happened, apparently. He was confused for a while there, caught up in in some seriously loopy ideas, but he’s got it under control now.

He’s in a state of delusion. At least, that’s what his doctors have explained. He’s not in a game, not saving the world, not a god; he’s just delusional.

He’s inclined to believe them. After all, why would they lie? It makes so much more sense than the story he’d cooked up anyway.

He’s relieved, at least, not to be the only one. He has his friends here, three of his favorite people in the universe, in _any_ universe (though he’s only been to one…he thinks.) He has them all close enough to talk to, to touch when allowed, and that makes this whole transition easier.

He misses the rest of it, whether it was imagined or not, kind of wishes he could go back to trolls and final bosses and _flying_ , god flying was cool- but it’s probably for the best to leave that all behind. He’s got what’s really important, the things no insane trip into a video game hellscape could take from him, and he can be happy with that.

About ninety percent of the time, anyway.

The other ten is rough. The other ten is kind of painful. The other ten feels like someone pulled the rug out from under him, dropped him into reality way before he was ever ready, and he can’t even float to catch himself this time.

Falling, he’d almost forgotten, kind of hurts.

Flailing straight out of Sburb and into reality, into a world that isn’t a smoking crater, was satisfying at a level that made him think he’d won. Jade had always said if anyone could save the world it was him, and lo and behold, consider Earth saved. Everything was just as he’d left it, all in one piece and mostly fine. He figured it was a job well done.

He expected a gold star and a pat on the back, a handshake from the president and a blessing from the pope. He expected to be able to take the summer off and spend as many hours as possible with his three favorite people in the world.

He didn’t expect the blank stares, the pitying glances, the outright mocking laughter. He didn’t expect to lose patience with the world, with himself, for his moods to shift like violent winds.

He didn’t expect any of this, really.

Finding out it was all fake hurts in a way that’s hard to describe, something low in his stomach, high in his throat, slightly choking and sharp. It’s a feeling that brings a taste of blood to his mouth, draws memories (dreams?) of death to mind. He feels stabbed, feels burned, feels floating and foreign, outside of his body. He feels so much more than alive and it’s not normal, he knows that.

He’s not normal, he’s…delusional. Apparently.

He tells Jade this and she growls at him, the way she does sometimes when she’s angry, says he should stop listening to crackpot doctors. He tells Rose and she speaks to him gently, sits with him sometimes and apologizes when she wants to be by herself instead. He tells Dave and, since he’s a true bro, he doesn’t have to say anything at all. They fist bump instead, hold hands if the mood strikes.

They all hold hands sometimes, even if the mood doesn’t strike, simply because there’s no one looking and they can. Sitting close together, a tight knit circle of brief contact and quiet laughter, they make him feel alright.

.

.

 

_TT: I don’t like to use the word “crazy”._

 

Because she isn’t.

She’s the first to admit that they’re all likely dealing with a considerable helping of PTSD, that perhaps they haven’t handled things in the best way, but that does not make any of them insane.

She has theory after theory in mind, each a slightly different explanation for what has happened here. They shared something, the four of them, and the outcome has her just as baffled as all their doctors. But rather than write it off as a psychological anomaly, she’s attempted to work out how things really happened.

Because these things certainly _did_ happen.

If they’re so delusional, she has argued, why do their stories share so many details? How have they all come here with nearly identical tales of alternate universes and super powers, of aliens and awesome cosmic events? If they made the whole thing up and tricked themselves into believing it, why are there mysterious craters scattered just where there should be, and a log of conversations with people who supposedly don’t exist?

There’s just no way it can’t be real.

She’s done her research, has found the evidence to back it up, but all anyone will grant her is that she is very, very clever, and very, very driven.

That her plain facts are largely ignored is the most frustrating part.

She has words enough to fill a stack of dictionaries, all describing her experience, the realness of it, the reasons why, but not a single one of those words seems to make a difference.

She’ll sit down and talk till she’s breathless, nestled in soft cushions in a doctor’s office, answering questions and spinning yarns that make the staff smile at her brilliance, shake their heads at what a loss she is.

When she finally runs out of things to say, she fades.

There are times that she breaks down, near-silent and terrifying, a drop into nothing. Like a slow walk off the edge of a cliff, she sits stone faced and simmering, breathing quiet and hard till the moment she slumps, shoulders dropping and chest heaving, one jerking motion to start her fall.

Her friends always find her there, grey with grieving, tongue-tied and furious, and they soothe her back to feeling human.

Jade strokes her hair, protective, while John forces his smiles to trick her into her own. Dave takes over her talking, steals up the words she’s left behind and spins them to something new.

She kisses them each on the forehead before she takes her leave for the night, slips to bed without another word.

.

.

 

_TG: rose is crazy jades crazier and youre_ _  
TG: well youre you_

 

And he’s Dave.

Singular, not plural.

He’s Dave who’s seriously fucked up, who probably always was, even before all this Sburb shit. He’s Dave who plays healthy like nobody’s business, jokes about it when he’s in good moods, like some little kid trying to get out of school, but all he really wants is a free pass on his sanity, all like “But teacher I didn’t even have _one_ emotional breakdown this week, can’t I come back to real life now?”

He’s Dave who knows what went down, remembers it vividly; every moment of battle, every alchemized piece of shit, every one of his hundred searing, painful deaths, from the stabbings to the shots to the explosions. He’s got each second of gameplay locked down in his mind like a fuckin’ map, marked with stickers and labels and little stars for the extra unbelievable parts.

He’s Dave who knows well enough not to bring up a single word of it to anyone but his three amigos. And even with them, he keeps his lips sealed more often than not.

Every once in a while he gives a rambling speech about time, about _traveling_ through time, about going back and fixing shit because he’s so sure he could do it if he could just remember how.

He likes to tell the kid down the hall, the one who thinks Transformers are real and that his grandad’s golf cart is alive, that he believes every word of _his_ story because no really why the fuck not? But when the nurse’s quiz him on Sburb, he gives all the right answers.

No, he didn’t save the world, no, he didn’t become a god, no, he didn’t turn into a giant orange bird once, no, he never gave himself a thumbs up across a crocodile infested stock exchange floor.

He’s just Dave, just this guy. Just a guy who never wanted to play that fucking game anyway.

If only he could stop doing that dumb thing where he mutters the truth to himself without realizing, maybe they’d let him go.

He pretends himself right into a corner again and again, till there’s nowhere to hide and here he doesn’t even have his shades for self-defense. They took them away with excuses about sharp objects and high risks and he just rolled his way-too-open eyes because what, do they think he’s gonna hurt himself? Fat fucking chance. Dead Daves are the enemy, remember?

He doesn’t think he could handle the sight of any more blood anyway.

It’s the blood that gets to him, more than anything. He can shrug off the guys telling him he’s nuts, doesn’t even mind being cooped up that much, but when he actually has to go back and hash out all the gorey details from this shit that people don’t even acknowledge as real, has to nod along numbly when they drop phrases like “intrusive thoughts” without getting ticked off like no shit, that’s what those are? And here he thought he was reliving having his throat cut due to some sick masochistic streak.

It’s the blood that clogs up his thinking, makes his brain stutter and grind to a halt trying to process how many of him there have been, how many copies of his own corpse have piled up in pointless death after pointless death.

He starts to lose himself, just a little, in bits and pieces, in timelines.

It’s his friends that bring him back, slowly but surely, with each mention of his name. _Dave_ they say, and smile. _Dave_ , they say, and sigh. _Dave_ , they say, and stifle gasps that will get them in _so_ much trouble if anyone catches them so close, so hot, their hearts beating so hard.

It’s totally worth it.

With every beat, they remind him who he is.

.

.

 

_GG: it sounds really crazy and kind of scary but….._ _  
GG: it also sounds kind of exciting!_

 

And _god_ was it ever.

Sburb was thrilling and beautiful and terrifying, and they came out of the experience with something even she couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams.

And let’s face it, her dreams were always pretty wild.

But she’s all around wild too, and that’s part of the problem. Her friends can tell their sides of the story, can sit on couches and share, can huddle in the corners of their beds when no one will listen to them, but she _can’t_. She can’t just sit, just stay, just listen. There’s a ferocity inside her, something that came alive when she went through all those portals and windows and vague shifts of spacetime, and now it never wants to rest.

When they brought her here with stars in her eyes and knots in her hair, from tossing and turning, from standing in the wind too long and too late, she’s sure she looked every bit of the mess her paperwork announces her to be.

Cleaned up, straightened out, she still carries the titles, the diagnosis, but with an easy smile that brightens the room.

The staff who’ve been there longest turn and look to new employees when they cross her, that warning glance that says “Don’t trust this one, she’s a _beast._ ”

But she’s no beast, just a girl with a rocky past and a lot on her mind. She knows what the nurses murmur behind her back and she thinks it’s funny on good days, infuriating on bad ones.

A wild child, eh? An aggressive little sprite? Sure, if that’s what they’d like to think. Whatever helps them sleep at night.

They don’t recognize her as a mastermind, a whip smart young woman who knows just how to meddle and poke, to work around the rules and gather her companions close at hours they should be locked away.

She’s always been good at bringing people together, both online and from across galaxies, and she’ll be damned if separate rooms and security guards are going to keep her from her loved ones.

Granted she hasn’t gotten into hot water for lashing out or flipping a table, it’s not too hard to sneak out, dart around from room to room and visit. Or, better yet, draw them all out to join her.

They keep quiet, under cover, sometimes literally under covers, and all together they’re so warm, so right. They work better as a group than apart, remember things more clearly and share things others simply can’t understand.

The times between are rough, long days away from them leaves Jade tense and tired, worn thin from keeping her temper. She pads across frosted tile floors, through clean, empty spaces she wants to fill up with a hundred more interesting things, till she finds them each in turn and sweeps them up into her arms.

A group hug is best, but those are iffy when staff is watching.

Sex is even better than best, but coordinating that takes a _lot_ of skill, and often even she can’t manage.

It sucks sometimes. It really, really does.

It’d be easy, on her own, to fall apart. She could sink to the lowest points and cry her eyes dry with frustration, with sorrow, if she had to go it alone. With these three by her side, though, she knows she can make it through. They might be walls away, but that’s nothing compared to an ocean away, to _worlds_ away!

She values their closeness, not just the physical proximity, but the affectionate air they maintain, in spite of it all.

It’s in the little moments, the ones that keep her feeling big.

Rose trails fingertips over her arm, just across the breakfast table. John waves to her, waggles his eyebrows in the silliest ways from just down the hall. Dave taps out a rhythm across the floor while they wait to see doctors, feet signaling something in a secret language all their own that translates to nothing and still means something.

They’re here with her, here _for_ her, keeping her strong. They see her through the scary parts, they keep her excited.

She couldn’t ask for anything more.

.

.

.


End file.
